


Being Human 101 :  Lessons in Physiology

by lornesgoldenhair



Series: The Mayfly and the Mountain [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-08 15:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6860794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lornesgoldenhair/pseuds/lornesgoldenhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is set in the universe created by 'In Your Place' wherein Clara gets her heartbeat back after the Doctor sacrifices himself to the Raven, but being a Time Lord with a special connection to his companion, he survives. You don’t have to have read it to read this. The two are different in style too. </p><p>In Summary : Clara having been frozen between one heartbeat and the next has to relearn how her body works. Everything from sleeping to processing alcohol, eating to sex, its all hazy to her after 400 years but the Doctor is on hand to help her discover what he describes as 'the fun a working body can lead to.'<br/>Rated M for later Chapters.<br/>A bit of an experimental work in progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleeping

She was back, he’d found a way and she was back. Heart beating, lungs breathing, alive, and he had spent the day adjusting. Adjusting to the memories which had returned, and to the reality of the woman in front of him, to the Clara of the stories he had heard, the one whose reputation in the universe was rapidly catching up with his, but whose face he could never describe until now. They had talked and laughed and cried a little, and then she had asked to go home, so of course, he took her there.

He was aware of the warmth from the console room at his back, the dim lights that shone from the balcony; and he was aware of the earth below, spinning slowly, bathed in sunlight. The greens and blues of her oceans and continents were familiar and bright, and to both the Doctor and Clara much missed. They hadn’t yet gone down there, there was a spell they didn’t yet want to break, so half asleep, perched in the TARDIS doorway, leaning hard into one side, he listened to Clara describe how she had never gone back to Earth after leaving him in that desert one day.

‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely curious but eyes half closing against his will.

‘Because I thought if you were to look anywhere for me it would be earth,’ she said, ‘I didn’t want to run into you.’

He snorted, ‘Charming, you put a whole planet on the Excluded list just in case you met me one day in a bookstore.’

‘Yes…because that’s exactly where you would go,’ she said mock defensively, ‘That and…’

‘And?’ He managed to open his eyes and look down at her, where she snuggled unashamedly against his chest, legs dangling out into space.

‘And it reminded me of too much. Of so much… of you.’

‘Ah…’ he said softly. The word hung in the sir for a moment heavy with meaning. He had lost companions and run from their memories trying to escape the inevitable pain. However this was different, this was more than companionship and the loss was unbearable. He had escaped all of that, his memories wiped, but Clara had been travelling, running from his loss all the time they had been apart, apparently avoiding some old haunts for the pain it caused, while he had been free. She’d seen to that, that he could go wherever he liked and live his life in whatever style he pleased without her shadow to remind him of all that sorrow. He kissed the top of her head gently, guilt in his lips.

‘I’m grateful,’ he said to her, ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘What for?

‘Grateful that as ever Clara you protected me from the worst of it. And sorry I couldn’t do the same for you.’

‘Shut up,’ she whispered, voice cracking a little against his shirt. ‘Just shut up. I didn’t protect you from enough, that Dial...all of that time… you should never have…’

‘Shhh,’ the Doctor closed his eyes again and made sure his arm was tight around her shoulders.

‘You Shhh,’ she countered and he chuckled at her banter. It broke the slight melancholy the subject was bringing and he felt her relax again.

‘We could be here all day doing this,’ he said, ‘Floating.’

‘How long have we been here?’ Clara asked, ‘because someone is looking sleepy.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘That’s why you’re dozing off is it?’

‘Hmmph.’ He opened one eye and tried to glare at her resulting in a cascade of giggles. She reached forward to ruffle his hair in an attempt to irritate him further. ‘Don’t you sleep?’ he asked to try to distract her.

‘Not for several hundred years, no. Well not because I’m tired anyway. I sometimes sleep just to pass the time.’

‘Do you even remember what being tired feels like?’ the Doctor asked curiously.

Clara looked thoughtful, chewed on her lower lip for a moment. ‘Umm… not really. A sort of heavy feeling? Maybe? Heavy round the eyes?’ He watched as she quickly checked her wrist for the hundredth time since she had come on board. ‘I still have a pulse,’ she said, ‘So does that mean I’ll get tired now? Maybe I am tired and can’t tell? Am I tired, do I look tired?’

He contemplated her face and rubbed a thumb lightly across one of her cheekbones. She did look tired and it was rather unsurprising given the day’s events. ‘Well your physiology is active again,’ he said, ‘you’ll burn energy and consume oxygen and presumably get tired as well. I’d hazard a guess you are. If I am, so you must be.’

‘I don’t know if I like the sound of it. It’s been pretty good not having to worry about these things. Not having to breathe, or eat or drink or rest, really useful on adventures.’

The Doctor rolled his eyes, ‘That can be seen both ways. Great when in extremis on Skaro, not so much cop when you miss out on the fun having a working body can lead to.’

Clara suddenly stared at him, huge eyes and dimpled smile betraying her amusement. ‘Fun Doctor? With my body? What kind of fun?’

He blushed, ‘Not that kind of... I wasn’t referring to…Not everything is an innuendo, Clara. You haven’t changed in that respect I see.’

She burst out laughing again. ‘So what pleasures of the body have I in store?’

He shifted, pulling himself up from the doorway as though making ready to run from her. Flustered he made a show of brushing down his jacket. ‘I just meant simple things like, eating, enjoying a cold drink… don’t look at me like that.’

She pulled an innocent face and then stood with him and took a moment to compose herself. ‘Eating and drinking… well I guess I have missed it. I can do it but nothing tastes of anything, it’s all cardboard to me. I gave up centuries ago and just stared jealously at other people over dinner.’ She frowned, ‘How will I know when I’m hungry?’ she asked curiously, ‘Or when… well you know…’ she looked awkward.

‘What?’

‘How will I know I need to go to the loo? I can’t remember,’ Clara’s face turned to slightly horrified and it was the Doctor’s turn to laugh.

‘I’m sure it will come back to you,’ he said with a wry smile and snapped his fingers to close the TARDIS doors.

‘But what if I don’t realise and…’ she dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘What if I have an accident?’

‘You’ll be fine,’ he reassured even as she stood in front of him looking distracted and slightly panicked. ‘Clara,’ he said, ‘Clara!’

‘Hmm?’ she looked back at him at last roused from her worrying thoughts.

‘Do you have any of that heavy feeling?’

‘Tiredness?’ she said and then paused as though consulting with her body, ‘Maybe, maybe a bit,’ she paused again suddenly and a large yawn racked her frame. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and she laughed, ‘Ok yes, that was a yawn. My first yawn in years. I must be tired and you… You look…’

‘Exhausted,’ he admitted and she raised her eyebrows, ‘Don’t look so surprised it’s been a very long day.’

‘No… it’s just, well… You just never usually admitted to it. You’d sneak off for a twenty minute catnap when you thought I wasn’t looking. Twenty minutes or longer. And you snore.’

He opened his mouth in surprise. Clara approached and shut it with one finger under his chin. ‘I noticed,’ she said, ‘I noticed lots of things you thought you kept hidden from me.’

The Doctor pursed his lips, ‘Right,’ he said with some resignation. ‘Well ignoring that for the sake of my embarrassment I really am quite tired and…’

‘Are we going to bed together?’ she asked suddenly and his eyes widened. ‘I don’t mean for anything scurrilous,’ she reassured, ‘I just mean… well I’d like to stay with you, if that’s ok? I don’t even know if I will sleep, I might have forgotten how, tired or not, I might get nightmares but I’d like to be with you…’

She suddenly looked very small, barely coming up to his shoulder. Her hands were tiny, her bone structure delicate. Gods how he had missed her. She yawned again and rubbed her eyes. He wanted to bundle her up and protect her and immediately the idea of her sleeping elsewhere without him became objectionable. He was beginning to really understand how he could sacrifice so much for this woman, why he would have moved worlds and stopped time all those years ago. Why if he had had his memories he would have been driven mad at their separation.

‘I kept your old room,’ he said, threading his fingers through hers. ‘Come…’

Like Clara herself the room had been frozen in time, just as she had left it, her belongings spread out across her dressing table, her clothes hanging off the back of a chair. It mirrored her bedroom in her London flat, now long gone and the Doctor watched as a look of sad nostalgia passed over his companion’s face. She swallowed hard.

‘I seem to keep wanting to cry now I’m alive again,’ she said.

‘Hormones,’ he said lightly and she smiled.

‘I’m a mess of hormones am I?,’ she shook her head. ‘Well I suppose I’ve been hormone free all these years, I’ve that to look forward to, mood swings and pre menstrual tension and….’

The Doctor held up one hand as he perched on the edge of the bed, ‘I don’t need details,’ he said to stop her.

‘You’ll be the one dealing with it, my first outpouring of hormones in four hundred years, could be nasty. You’ll need to arm yourself… mainly with chocolate or ice cream if I remember right.’

He pulled a slightly alarmed face and then gestured to the bed bidding her get ready while he simply collapsed back against the cushions and pillows. He’d slept there plenty of times over the years, somehow lured to this quaint little room with no owner. There was something about the atmosphere it created, the vague smell of perfume on the pillows that comforted him. He had a feeling it probably belonged to her but the TARDIS would never confirm it, yet she didn’t deny it either and never deleted it on her yearly clean ups of extraneous or unused rooms.

Clara emerged from the bathroom while he lay fighting sleep. He could hear her cross the floor but his eyes refused to open and already his breathing was slowing. The bed dipped as she climbed onto it and he felt her wriggle up beside him, cautiously at first and then with more decisiveness until she was resting on her side with her back against him. Without thinking he turned towards her and she was saying something quietly but he was falling and couldn’t hear the words.

He slept. And so did she. The hours passed uneventfully.

The following morning the Doctor woke suddenly, missing the press of a body against his torso and the warmth radiating from it. Thirty-seven degrees of human heat; it was almost enough to make him break a sweat had he not been able to use his superior physiology to self regulate his own temperature down. It seemed an extreme measure when he could simply shuffle backwards away from the source, but the source was Clara and much longed for so he stayed put.

Now he was too cold. He lay for a moment trying raise his temperature again but it seemed to be taking an age, and there was an odd smell distracting him, and where was she? Not in the ensuite, he could see through the empty door. How long had he been here? Eight, nine hours? Ridiculous. But it had been so good, gently drifting as she pressed against him in pyjamas the TARDIS provided her. Just the same as those she used to wear sometimes when they travelled, satin finish, cream. She wanted him near, and reassured him so, whispering to him in the moments when they both roused in the dark and dozed back into peace. He was thrilled but stoically didn’t let on, instead unconsciously he had slipped an arm around her and a hand up onto her belly while he slept. It was a physical intimacy they had never had and it seemed so foolish that they had denied themselves something so simple, but now it was beginning to rectify. A good night’s sleep for both.

But he hadn’t taken into account her memories, transmitted to him by skin to skin contact.

Her memories became his dreams as he drifted in and out. Memories of loss and misunderstanding and lies. Memories of their parting. At first they dominated, made him frown and stir, mutter in his sleep, but then they changed, encouraged by his proximity, her nightmares over. Memories of them together and the things they had done replaced them. Images of places they and been and narrow escapes they had dodged. They made him smile and her body relaxed. The Doctor snuggled closer to her allowing sunrises and waterfalls from their past to sooth him to deeper sleep. Clara might not have slept for years but she made it look simple now. The Doctor never wanted it to end.

The smell persisted and he attempted to bury himself under the covers again. The best night’s sleep, probably ever. He never wanted it to stop but he was definitely awake now. What was it? Burning? Something in his TARDIS was burning and the scent of it was growing with each moment. No more sleep for him. The Doctor reluctantly opened his eyes and found a dressing gown nearby, left the room to find the kitchen had been moved opposite, and in the kitchen, Clara.


	2. Eating

Clara next to the stove. The Doctor ran a hand over his face. Please don’t let it be a soufflé.

She turned and glared at him, He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Oops.

‘It’s not a soufflé,’ she said curtly, ‘Someone… meaning a sentient ship… wouldn’t give me soufflé ingredients. All I’m allowed to do is cook breakfast and she keeps interfering.’

The Doctor tried to repress a smirk.

‘Don’t laugh! For all you know I’ve perfected soufflé in all these years away.’

‘Have you then, perfected it?’ he asked drily.

Clara shifted and looked guiltily back at the slightly charred bacon in the frying pan, ‘Not exactly…’ she admitted, and then changed the subject. ‘So anyway I woke up with this weird pain in my stomach and at first I thought something had gone wrong with the unfreezing thing…’

‘But you worked it out….?’ He took a seat at the table in the centre of the kitchen almost certain he knew what was coming.

‘Yes, it got worse and worse, sort of nagging and grinding, and I was almost going to wake you and demand we go to a Space Hospital but then I found myself thinking about bacon and tomatoes and sausages and it came to me… I’m starving Doctor! I’ve never been so hungry!’

‘You would be, you’ve not eaten in four centuries,’ he said.

‘God, it’s really painful. And loud… listen!’ she stepped over to where he sat and indicated to him to press his ear to her stomach but he declined, clearly able to hear the loud rumble from where he was. He chuckled. ‘You’re finding this hilarious aren’t you?’ she asked.

‘No, not hilarious, it’s fascinating actually. What you were saying about it hurting, haven’t you experienced pain recently?’

Clara returned to the frying pan and flipped some bacon rashers. ‘Not like that no, well not ever really. Sometimes things sting but then it’s gone.‘

‘Interesting,’ he mused. ‘Everything is limited to that tiny moment between heartbeats.’

Clara rolled her eyes, ‘Please tell me you’re not eyeing me up as your next project. I’m not here for you to perform research on.’

‘Not research no, but there’s no harm in trying to understand,’ The Doctor’s mind was absolutely buzzing with interest. The number and frequency of his hand gestures had doubled at least and he could feel a tingle in his limbs he associated with new discoveries. ‘Well you have to admit it’s quite incredible. No-one has been extracted before now and remained out of their timeline so long. To see what happens, how the person develops, or deteriorates… or not in your case,’ he added when she began glowering at him. ‘An awful lot could be learned Clara.’

‘In case you build an extracting machine too, I suppose?’

‘No, in case something happens to someone who has been extracted and they need help. The wider my understanding the better. Something like this could prevent what happened to you when your timeline got stuck in Trap Street and the Reapers started appearing. There are all sorts of reasons to examine you… this…’

She sighed pointedly and put some bread in the toaster. ‘And it’ll make you happy won’t it? To understand how I worked all those years. It’s basically curiosity, you’re always curious but Space, Doctor, and not the kind with planets, personal space is kind of important between… couples...’

‘Couples?’ he repeated warily.

‘Couples,’ she said, ‘Who respect each other’s space.’

He hesitated, torn between asking more questions and respecting Clara’s boundaries. He sat with his mouth open for a moment too long before her composure cracked and gave her away.

‘Its fine Doctor, ask away, I know you and you’ll just get frustrated if you can’t explore it… you can even run experiments as long as they are reasonably ethical.’

He felt a surge of happiness at the opportunity and his brain began firing questions at him to ask. What had she been aware of when she was trapped? How much time had passed for her? And afterwards while she was running through the universe, did she ever feel the cold? Did her hair grow, or her nails? He drew breath and was about to start the inquisition when Clara sat opposite him and plonked two plates on the table.

‘Breakfast first,’ she said firmly.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ His curiosity would have to wait.

She smiled and eyeballed her toast carefully as the first toast in centuries no doubt. ‘Food. I’ve resented you for so long. Now I hope we can make up and enjoy one another’s company again. Lets be friends.’

The Doctor stared at her in disbelief for talking to her meal and Clara ignored him.

‘Right. Here goes,’ she said and took a bite. She chewed slowly and shut her eyes at first. She swallowed, contemplated and after a moment whispered ‘Oh my God.’

Then something rather alarming came over her and for a spell of minutes the Doctor was frozen, fork poised in the air while Clara tore into her breakfast like an animal. She was unstoppable, shovelling bacon and egg and sausage into herself in a most unladylike matter. There was grease around her lips and on her fingers as she disposed of the cutlery and just went for it like she hadn’t eaten in… well years. He didn’t know whether to be shocked or amused and then just as he had decided on bemusement as an acceptable reaction she began to moan carnally with each mouthful.

‘It’s so good,’ she said, licking her fingers, ‘even the burned bits are good. Its meaty and salty and tasty, and how have I survived all this time without tasting this? My world has been empty! This is what you meant isn’t it? About my body and pleasure?’ His protest was waved aside, ‘Mmmph! I need more of this,’ she opened her eyes, ‘make me more,’ she reached forward and took the Doctor’s plate from beneath his chin and began to tuck in, ‘More of everything Doctor, and coffee, and orange juice and grapefruit and cereal and all the things I took for granted when I was alive.’

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the TARDIS producing this shopping list and lining up ingredients on the counter beside them. There seemed to be an awful lot.

‘Clara you’ll make yourself ill. Your stomach isn’t used to all this,’ he warned sensibly. ‘It’s been empty for four hundred years, can’t you ease it in gently?’ He watched as his toast was demolished and felt a creeping sense of defeat.

‘I’ll be fine, just feed me.’ Clara paused briefly in her actions and looked up at him urgently, ‘Feed me!’

He put more bread in the toaster.

The frenzy lasted about an hour and then peace finally settled over the kitchen.

‘I don’t think I feel very well,’ she said eventually. Clara sat still and stiff, her arms wrapped around her stomach and a faintly green tinge in her skin. The Doctor sipped his coffee and placed the cup gently on the table. ‘Don’t say I told you so,’ she added.

‘I did warn…’

‘Shut up.’

He shut up and listened to her groan softly.

‘So this is eating too much,’ she said, ‘This weird swollen feeling. I feel like I’m going to burst. How do I get rid of it? How long does this last?’

‘Depends how much you ate,’ the Doctor said non-commitedly. There was a pause during which Clara placed the tips of her fingers over her lips and swallowed hard. She hiccoughed and her large brown eyes flew open.

‘Doctor?’ she looked alarmed as she was hit by another powerful looking hiccough. ‘The swollen feeling feels different.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to be sick,’ he asked with resignation.

Clara looked sharply at him. ‘Well I don’t know do I, I don’t know what feeling sick feels like, I’ve forgotten.’

‘It feels like feeling sick,’ he gestured in exasperation. ‘Unpleasant, bilious… a sense of impending unavoidable disaster.’

‘Well how do I tell if…’ He could see from across the table the muscles of her body contract while at the same time her hand covered her whole mouth. She stood suddenly slightly wild eyed.

‘Oh no… not on the floor, not in the kitchen, Clara that’s just a health hazard, and the TARDIS, well she’ll never forgive you,’ he rounded the table fast and placed a hand on each side of her back as she lurched again. He propelled her to the sink when he saw there was no way she’d get to the bathroom. Clara’s top half tipped forward.

‘Hair!’ she commanded, Hold my hair!’

The Doctor slipped his hands around her forehead just in time to save her hair and then averted his eyes. Around him the TARDIS groaned at the thought of the clean-up operation as four portions of fry-up hit the sink. The Doctor winced and mouthed ‘Sorry,’ to the ceiling while keeping Clara upright. He had warned her after all, she really should learn to listen. All this time and she was still stubborn. Clara knew best. He smiled a little at that and tried to focus on his amusement while the heaving noises made his own stomach lurch. She was just catching up, learning the basics again.

Human Being 101, Get to Know Your Body After 400 Years Frozen. It had to be the strangest experience, all of the things people took for granted, things they learned about their body as a child or teen. What to eat, what to avoid, potty training, allergies. Not for the first time since she came back he wondered exactly what it had felt like, to be unresponsive physically to the world, and again and again the word ‘disconnected,’ came to mind. Disconnected from all the things that made humans human. Clara was the most human human he’d ever known, all that warmth and vulnerability and bravery. How had she lived all that time in such an isolated way? Walking the length and breadth of her TARDIS alone in the middle of the night while Ashildr slept. Not being able to share a meal with a friend and get any enjoyment. What else?

There was a cough behind him and Clara struggled to stand up again from the sink, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth and teary eyes. She looked shyly up at him.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Clara…’ What else? Well she hadn’t missed this aspect of humanity; being sick.

‘You were right, you were right,’ she admitted quickly. ‘Too much, too fast. I never want to see bacon again by the way.’

The Doctor smiled kindly, ‘It’s Ok,’ he said and rubbed one hand up and down her back. ‘Just slow it down a bit. You’ve plenty of time. You don’t have to experience everything in one day.’

‘Again, you’re right,’ she ran a hand through her hair now damp with sweat. ‘Eww, I’d forgotten about that,’ she picked at her jumper, clinging to her back, ‘Oh this is horrible I’m all sticky.’

‘Happens when you’re sick,’ the Doctor said calmly. She pulled another face of dissatisfaction.

‘Listen I’m going to get cleaned up a bit,’ Clara said, ‘But why don’t we go somewhere? Somewhere we know, somewhere that’s relatively safe and where we won’t have to run because I don’t think I can manage that.’

That was his Clara, keen for a trip. ‘Ok, I’ll have a think,’ he patted her on both shoulders, ‘Go, clean up, feel better.’

‘Somewhere warm, a beach maybe,’ she called and he watched as she disappeared into the TARDIS as though she’d never been elsewhere, all the while his brain asking questions about beaches they’d been to, the risks of extraction, human physiology and whether they were a couple.


	3. Kissing

He chose somewhere warm. Somewhere with wide vast technicolour seas and gentle waves and no monsters he knew of, although that didn’t always turn out as he planned. He didn’t pack a picnic given Clara’s reaction to breakfast but he did bring a blanket to sit on and some flasks of something which might settle her stomach. If she felt up to it later they could walk up the hill to the nearest village and browse the stalls and shops, or they could stay where they were on the beach until the suns set. He used to point out stars for her and wondered if she remembered them.

She remembered the beach anyway and was delighted, stripping down hastily to her bikini and lying on the blanket. He felt compelled to avert his eyes at the sight and she caught him at it.

‘Not bad for over 400,’ she joked, elbowing him to force him to look over. ‘Not an ounce heavier or lighter than I was at 29, and no wrinkles. I got a tattoo once but it was gone by the next day,’ she said wistfully and he wondered briefly what she’d had done. He didn’t ask.

‘You’ve aged well,’ he said with a somewhat formal tone and returned his gaze to the sea. He heard Clara sigh beside him.

‘You see _this_ ,’ she waved her hand at him, ‘ _This_ is why we got into trouble.’

‘What?’ he asked in a tone of minor panic, the last thing he wanted was for them to go back down that road. He looked at her again but kept his eyes firmly locked with hers. Clara leaned back on her elbows, pushed her bosom out, nodded her chin towards it.

‘You want to look,’ she said mischievously.

‘Clara!’ he cried, appalled.

‘You do, you want to look,’ she nodded down her body, ‘Go on, its fine, in fact it’s better than fine. It’s perfectly natural. I want you to look. I chose this bikini for that purpose. Look. Right now. Do it...’

‘Clara I don’t... I can’t just… It’s not…’

She sighed again, ‘Proper? Not something a Time Lord would do? Stop being repressed. You tried to hide things from me before, we both did. Let’s just be honest about what we feel… and what we want.’ She waited a moment her confidence waning a little, visibly shrinking under her mask of bluster and bossiness. Eventually she slumped in dejection.

The Doctor looked back at the sea awkwardly and let his joined hands fall between his knees while he chewed over his dilemma. She was of course right, he did want to look, he wanted more than to look, but she’d only been unfrozen for a day and he didn’t want her to go into sensory overload. He wanted to make her happy but, it was too early for this. Wasn’t it?

He mentally slapped himself. He was just making excuses. He probably couldn’t put her into sensory overload if he tried, he was so out of practice. At the root of it he was still afraid of rejection even though she had kissed him earlier today, even though he now remembered what happened in the Cloisters and what was said and she was repeating half of it for him now. But how much, how fast? Surely he couldn’t just, _do that_?

His mind was still prattling on when he felt her hand on his arm.

‘Doctor,’ she tugged and he looked up automatically. She was kneeling now, right beside him, the glow of the sun on her soft skin and the tiniest hints of perspiration highlighting her collar bones and cleavage. Her face still indicated she was almost as nervous as him. Almost, not quite.

‘I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ he confessed.

‘Do I need to do you a set of cards?’

‘Maybe?’ he squinted up into the sun to find her face. Clara laughed.

‘Well I might when we get back but in the meantime, I’ll give you some tips.’

‘I would be extremely grateful,’ he said.

‘Ok. Start simple. Compliment the bikini…’ she prompted.

‘It’s um…’ he struggled for words, ‘very… pink…’

Clara rolled her eyes. ‘That’s pathetic but Ok that’ll do,’ she said.

‘Now what?’

‘Push me down on the blanket and kiss me.’

The Doctor jumped like he had been burned. ‘That’s a bit forceful isn’t it? Isn’t there a slow build?’

‘I think it would be easier if we just skipped to that bit and didn’t waste any more time. And anyway I want to be kissed,’ she explained. Clara pressed her lips together, ‘At least that’s what I think it means… I’ve got this sort of throb in my lips, I’m sort of aching, but in a good way. I want you to push me down on the blanket. I want to feel you on top of me. Skin on skin if you think you’re up to it. At least take your jacket off you’ll roast.’

The Doctor’s eyes had been getting wider as she spoke and now she broke her stream of consciousness and realised what she had been saying. Her cheeks flushed red and she looked away.

‘I could be wrong,’ she said, ‘I just have these feelings, they’ve been getting stronger all day.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ’I can see that.’ The Doctor hesitated a moment and then cautiously peeled off his jacket leaving him in a light white shirt and black trousers. He could feel Clara’s eye’s roaming over him and watched her slowly pull her lower lip through her teeth. She leaned backwards on the blanket a little inviting him to take control and it was with an element of shock that he did. Well she seemed keen enough and parts of him were becoming keener than that. Caught in the moment the Doctor smoothly moved over her until his body rested against hers and laid her down against the blanket. He held her gaze for a second too long and then something in her seemed to give way. Clara quickly pressed her lips to his and slipped her tongue between them causing his heartrate to double in seconds. At the same time her hips came up and her thighs grasped him tightly, pushing her pelvis hard against him and rocking it in time with their kiss. He responded as she desired, her mental images vivid and loud and streaming into his open consciousness.

After a minute she pulled away, panting slightly, not used to needing to breathe as yet. ‘Wow,’ she said.

‘Ok?’ he queried, a little dishevelled himself, she’d managed to open up the buttons of his shirt during the kissing process and pull the tails from his trousers.

‘You’re a fantastic kisser,’ she explained.

‘Um… thank you. It helps being psychic,’ he moved off her slightly and began tidying himself up for the sake of something to do. He was particularly concerned with covering the trouser area.

‘Shh, don’t tell me that it spoils it,’ she said and then became thoughtful. ‘Of course I’ve not really been able to feel anything when I’ve kissed people over the years. And I did try kissing a few. Men, women, the odd alien. But I don’t respond to it at all normally. It’s like kissing my granny.’

‘And kissing me isn’t like kissing your granny?’ he asked.

Clara grinned. ‘No, nothing like it. It… stirs something in me. It makes me want to rake my fingers through your hair and leave marks on your back.’

The Doctor looked suitably intrigued. ‘Is that normal for you? I mean when you were alive and kissed people is that what it did to you?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know, I can’t remember that far back. I don’t know how you rate on my scale of kissing ability but I’d guess you’re pretty intense. Bound to be at 2000 years old. It feels like you’re up there with the best… probably.’

He gave her an owlish look. ‘So what you’re saying is I might be positively godlike or possibly a terrible kisser but you’ve nothing to judge by and anything’s better than your gran?’

Clara laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,’ she teased, leaning forward to kiss him again, before flopping back onto her side of the blanket. ‘Wow,’ she said to herself again, ‘It’s sort of tingley. I have tingles. My hearts a bit skippy too. And the tingles are nice. Makes me want more of them.’

Aware she also wanted to leave marks on his skin a thrilled Doctor fidgeted with his clothing again. He was warming to this new found honesty but some of her descriptions of what she wanted to do to him were… having an effect. He failed to secure one of the fastenings on his shirt and realised his hands were shaking. Clara’s head turned to him and she batted them away from his task.

‘Leave.’ She commanded. ‘Did I see flasks? Because my mouth feels odd and I think it might mean I’m thirsty. That or you taste funny, do you taste funny? I mean because you’re an alien?’

‘No, Clara, I don’t, at least no-one has said that before now,’ he replied, trying not to laugh.

‘Sorry not being rude just curious. Hey you get to be curious about me being frozen right? It’s the same principle. I’ve never kissed an alien before, you might taste of lemons or marshmallows or…or… pennies for all I know.’ She patted the blanket and found her sunglasses, slipping them on.

‘My saliva is made of the same stuff as yours… mostly,’ the Doctor said. ‘Water.. amylase…' he reeled off some chemical compounds.

‘That’s good to know,’ Clara said happily, stretching her limbs out. ‘Warm here isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘It’s strange. I can feel the sun on my skin now, and I can feel when your shadow blocks it,’ she giggled as he hastily moved out of the way, ‘That’s right! Get out of my sun! I didn’t used to notice hot or cold or direct sunlight. It was all the same to me. It could be the most beautiful day but I wouldn’t notice anything about it as being unusual. I just didn’t get that lift you get when the sun’s warm in your face, you know?’

He nodded, fascinated. 'You would fail to synthesise vitamin D, or have any of the other chemical reactions associated with sunlight.'

‘Right...Hey maybe now I’ll tan,’ she said, ‘I’ve been pale all this time because I went and died in winter. A tan would be great. The ability to actually change my appearance a little now and then. You’d think it was all good news never aging, but my hair never grows either and if I try and cut it to a new style the next moment its back to this.’

‘So all of you was quite literally stuck between heartbeats?’ he asked his curiosity taking over again. He had absolutely no idea how some of this was possible. To walk and talk, but for the basic physiology to be stuck. To be able to mimic breathing but be unable to get a haircut.

‘Completely,’ Clara confirmed, ‘I tried and tried for ages to make some sort of change, tried more and more permanent things. Haircuts, hair dye, tattoos, but none of it worked. You have to kind of like yourself a bit to accept yourself as you are for 400 years. I’m just lucky I got a trim before I went to Trap Street because I ended up just having to accept me as me.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ the Doctor said softly, ‘I wouldn’t change anything about you.’

Clara turned her head a little and lowered her sunglasses. ‘See,’ she said gently, ‘Isn’t it better when we say this stuff?’ he dipped his head and felt a warmth flutter in his stomach, something pleasant and safe. It felt like truth and honesty and acceptance. Clara squeezed his hand and pushed her glasses up her nose to save his embarrassment. ‘Anyway the bob hairdo, its timeless so I was onto a winner. Oh that breeze, that’s good,’ she said after a moment, ‘I feel like I’m cooking out here. Hope I don’t go all sweaty again, that’s less than attractive…. What temperature is it anyway…? And pass me that drink you promised I’ve decided its thirst….definitely thirst…’

Smiling, the Doctor rummaged in the basket and found one of the flasks, a soothing and iced fruit mix which would fix the breakfast error and keep her cool. Handing it to Clara he wondered if what she felt when they kissed was anything like what he did. The rush of sensation and thud of his heartbeats, a desperation to do more, go further. Maybe her body would have to relearn the sexual response after all these years along with everything else that seemed new and alien to her. Certainly while she described a tingle he was wrestling with something rather more distracting and this presented a problem. He wasn’t entirely sure he could allow her time to get to grips with her body again before he had the irresistible desire to get to grips with it himself.


	4. Burning

‘Doctor!’

He looked up from his book at her voice. Clara had only gone to bed a few minutes ago, proudly recognising tiredness by a stint of yawning and eye rubbing, but now she was making her way back to the console room. He’d said he’d join her a little later, needing as he did some wind down time after their afternoon on the beach. She really was attractive in that bikini and he had to get his thoughts under control. A good, informative book and some tea should do it. Mending bits of TARDIS had failed and resulted only in him electrocuting himself.

‘Doctor!’

She entered the room, dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, hair a little mussed.

‘What is it?’ he asked cautiously, sipping his cup of tea. Whatever happened he had to focus on the tea.

Clara suddenly opened her dressing gown and dropped it to the floor. The Doctor choked. He briefly had to employ his respiratory bypass until he recovered. Underneath she had a pristine white set of underwear on, which covered little, and that was it. He opened his mouth trying to find words. Yes he’d seen the bikini, but that was in the context of the beach. The console room was no place for near nakedness. The TARDIS would throw a fit.

‘Lights up,’ Clara asked the TARDIS and the dim evening glow setting was set to daylight. So much for the ship refusing to co-operate. The Doctor mental scowled at it for making his situation even more awkward.

‘Well?’ Now standing in the brightly lit room Clara gestured to herself and the Doctor could see the problem immediately.

‘Ah…’ he said.

‘Sunburn, I’ve got bloody sunburn,’ Clara said. ‘I haven’t burned in centuries.’

‘Yes well, um… maybe we should have thought of that now you’re ‘alive’ again, your skin will be vulnerable to the sun’s rays. It’s as I said, chemical reactions, vitamin D and in this case melanin.’

‘You mean I need to start wearing factor thirty again?’ she sighed, ‘Do you know when I first got my pulse back I was over the moon but there are so many catches, I never realised. Exhaustion, hormonal swings, sunburn, vomiting… There will be others too I bet that I’ve just forgotten about.’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in shock. ‘Don’t be like that, Clara, you know what the alternative was…’ he said rising from his chair, a flood of memory and emotion hitting him. It seemed his brain hadn’t finished cataloguing and storing his recovered memories properly yet and they rushed to overwhelm him. ‘This is all my fault, I should never have interfered, but I couldn’t just let you go either…’ confusion overcame him. What would have been the right thing to do? Let her die? The extraction might be seen as immoral… but she was here and now she was alive.

Clara sensed a sudden inner turmoil and immediately apologised on seeing his face as he came down the steps from the balcony.

‘Sorry, that was selfish of me. I don’t want the alternative, I really don’t. I am thrilled to be alive again I promise, to have a pulse, to be part of the world around me. I want to connect to it again, to you. It’s just I’ve just forgotten so much. Its… it’s like I’m not human anymore. Like I turned into a super evolved version, or an android, or something that doesn’t have all these needs… needs I used to just know how to juggle, pressing needs. Hunger, thirst, tiredness… and now… pain…’ she rubbed a shoulder tentatively, ‘and sex! I’ve been thinking about that all evening too. Non stop.’ She squirmed, ‘I don’t know how to cope with that anymore. I’ve got to learn it all again. It’s worse than being a teenager.’ She wriggled and looked down at her shoulder awkwardly, ‘It really hurts,’ she pouted.

Trying hard to ignore what she was saying about sex the Doctor closed the gap between them. ‘The TARDIS will have something for it in the med bay, for the burns I mean,’ Clara giggled.

‘Not for the sex?’ she winked.

He ignored her stooping to pick up her gown and softly draping it over her reddened shoulders. Clara caught one of his wrists as he did so.

‘Come with me?’ she asked, ‘I might need a hand.’

‘What for?’ he asked trying to remain oblivious. If she really did need to relearn everything about that kind of intimacy he mustn’t rush her, or take advantage of her current inability to safely prioritise her needs. What if he did what she was wanting and then she cursed him for it a few weeks down the line? Unthinkable. No, no, no.

‘Aftersun lotion?’ she suggested keeping her eyes averted and speaking in a matter of fact tone, ‘On my back… I’m bound to need some, you know for the burns.’

‘There’s probably a setting on the sonic which would…’ he started, sensing where this was going.

Clara rolled her eyes and tugged on his wrist, pulling him towards the door. ‘Lotion,’ she said firmly, ‘that’s what I need.’

The TARDIS was evidently thinking along the same lines as Clara as when he reached the medibay the Doctor found dim lights, faint music and a number of candles next to a massage table and various other ‘useful’ bits and pieces. He stopped and plucked the bottle of champagne out of its bucket. Clara giggled.

‘I didn’t think she’d be speaking to me after earlier with the sink,’ she said.

He raised one eyebrow in suspicion, ‘She’s outdone herself,’ he said watching Clara hop up onto the table and slip the gown down off her shoulders. The straps of her bra followed, hanging loosely half way down her upper arms. Her shoulders looked painful and as she craned to look over them he could see the redness on her back, from neck to waist. That really was going to be nasty by morning.

Deciding to get this over with as quickly as possible he slipped off his jacket and rolled his shirt sleeves up trying to ignore Clara’s enthusiastic smile.

‘This lotion will heal the burns completely once absorbed,’ he said doing his best impersonation of an actual Doctor.

‘How long do they take otherwise? I sort of remember getting burned as a little girl and mum plastering me with camomile lotion.’

‘How primitive,’ he said amused, ‘Several days to get over the worst of it, I think, depending on the burn.’ He made a gesture to get her to lie down and saw her repress her telltale dimples. He was very aware of his formality but massaging Clara in the romantic atmosphere of the adapted med bay might push him over the edge. He watched as she unhooked her bra and dropped it casually over one side of the table and he knew he was being teased. He had a sudden need for vengeance, to tease back. Did she think he couldn’t? Did she think he was, what had she called it, ‘repressed?’ He had two thousand years of experience, he could easily wind her up the way she was trying to wind him. It was almost too much of a challenge to ignore.

He surveyed the scene in front of him with new eyes. Luckily for him Clara’s naivety about how her skin now reacted had led to her being sunburned right down her back, and down over her thighs and legs. So much hot burning skin. He would have to make sure the treatment was evenly and fairly applied.

Somewhere in the back of his mind his old conscience was shouting at him to stop. He silenced it swiftly. After everything they’d been through, here they were alone, relaxed, expressing similar levels of affection and Gods help him, desire. Why shouldn’t they just have a little fun? The TARDIS seemed to agree and she was a pretty good judge.

Slowly he pressed the palms of his lotioned hands to Clara’s sore shoulders and drew gentle circles over the burns. He continued with variation in pressure and rhythm in a methodical but sensuous pattern, loosening her muscles and gently soothing her. He stroked down her spine, teasing at the junction of her back and bikini bottoms, dipping his fingers under the hem of the fabric just enough so as not to miss any burns. He could see them begin to fade already but kept up his work, altering the strokes once he saw the bulk was healed, changing them from medicinal to sensual in their purpose.

He’d set out to give her more of ‘the tingles,’ but the longer he massaged the more provocative the noises coming from the top of the table were. When he stroked down the back of Clara’s thighs she jerked against the table needily and let out an audible gasps which went straight to his own burgeoning arousal. It was all new to her he realised as he dipped his hands between her thighs again, she had been unable to feel anything like this in four centuries. He wondered how intense the feelings were and watched as Clara wriggled against the table, a hint of desperation in her movements. He couldn’t help but smile. Should he put her out of her misery or continue what he was doing?

A strangled groan from her made up his mind.

‘Clara?’

‘I feel like I’m on fire,’ she panted, ‘Not burny hot sun fire, a different fire. Coiled up inside me, like pressure. I know what it is but, ah, I don’t remember it being like this, so.. intense. I can’t tell if it’s amazing or just too much.’ She sat up suddenly and un-expectantly, the Doctor had been sure she would remain where she was, allowing him to finish what he was doing for her. Instead there she sat, topless, sweating, hair disarranged and cheeks pink, panting slightly. It was quite the sight and took him aback as he tried not to just stare at her aroused body. He moved to the champagne bucket and poured two glasses to distract himself and maybe her.

‘I think it’s amazing,’ she said trying to come to some sort of conclusion, ‘but it makes me want more, and more… God I’m so hot!’ she fanned herself and wiped at her damp throat and neck. The Doctor handed her some champagne which she downed in one.

‘Well… um…’ he started still a little startled by how far along the road of arousal she had travelled, it was obviously all coming abck to her fast, ‘You just let me know, what you think might help…’ his glass was plucked from his hand and she drank that too before reaching for the bottle.

‘Oh that’s nice,’ she appraised, ‘alcohol never had an effect on me before, I’d have to watch everyone else getting drunk at parties and I could down gallons of it and nothing would happen. It didn’t even taste nice. Now I can get legitimately tipsy! Don’t look at me like that it’ll be fun.’ She gave him a heated look that translated as ‘give me fun, now.’

The Doctor wiped his brow. Was it him or was the entire room getting hotter and less like a medibay.

‘Hot in here,’ Clara said voicing his thoughts, ‘I’m all sticky again, sticky and hot and…’ she wriggled again where she was seated and made a noise like a growl. ‘Help me,’ she requested, pushing her damp hair back from her face, the flush on her cheeks attractively wanton.

‘How would you like me to….help?’ he asked suspecting the answer. Clara reached forward and pulled him to her, opening his shirt and pressing against him damply. His mind was racing with images then, she certainly had an adventurous and vivid imagination and for his worth he would do practically anything she asked, anything, just ask Clara, ask. He loosened a few more buttons, grabbed his champagne glass back and filled it.

‘Whatever you think will work, just get me there, this is torture,’ she finished a third glass and set it down before shuffling back onto the massage table. Quickly she disposed of her remaining underwear and let out a rich laugh when her companion raised his eyebrows. ‘This is long over due Doctor, for both of us, don’t you think?’

He almost growled in reply but he was increasingly aware of the amount of champagne she was quaffing into an out of practice body. She was ready to pop any moment but she was also increasingly drunk having never been affected by drink before now and completely unused to its effects. His conscience popped up again. Be a gentleman , Doctor. But it was difficult. It was in fact very, very _hard._

And this champagne bottle seemed to never run out. Of course it did nothing for him. He began to wish he had some ginger beer for courage. He looked about but the TARDIS didn’t provide it as requested. Spoil sport sentient ship.

Meanwhile, finishing another glass, Clara leaned forward suddenly and wrapped her naked legs around his hips, clung with her arms to his neck and kissed him deeply. She was hot and damp and tasted of champagne and although he had the best of intentions, he wasn’t made of stone. The Doctor gave in. A little. He’d give her what she wanted and then when the edge was taken off her need he’d reassess the situation in the context of the booze she was downing and her capacity for it.

She must have felt him relax a little because Clara smiled up at him more languidly than a few minutes before and let her fingers wander over his skin. She nibbled on his ear and giggling dropped her lips to his chest, trailing her tongue across his nipples. He breathed in sharply. He was rather enjoying drunk Clara but a plan was a plan. Her needs first.

The Doctor stood firmly between her thighs and leaned down to kiss her again, slipping one hand between them and caressing her smooth damp stomach on his way down her body. He found what he was looking for and Clara bucked up against him, whispered a plea in his ear and whined needily.

This wouldn’t take long.


	5. Thawing

 

Poor Clara. The Doctor busied himself rearranging the sheets while she remained locked in the ensuite. She really was having it tough since getting her heartbeat back. It wasn’t quite the romantic conclusion to their tale he had envisaged that day she had grasped her wrist and told him with unbridled delight that she had a pulse again. The dramatic way she had been saved, the threat of the Reapers and Time Lords, he had imagined them to be running through space and time being pursued by enemies, while in quiet snatched moments furthering their relationship on king sized beds made up with silk sheets. Maybe that last part was unrealistic, they were more likely to snatch moments in endless corridors. But regardless, fantasy and reality were mismatched. Instead of the scenes conjured by his imagination they were in the time vortex, unnoticed by enemies, spinning quietly in space after some teenage fumbling the night before, while Clara nursed her first hangover in four centuries.

Oh yes, he’d better see about that. The Doctor crossed the room and listened for a moment for any sign of life. He tapped gently on the door.

‘You alright in there?’

A fit of coughing and retching, ‘Do I sound alright?’ she snapped. He winced and back away from the grumpy thing in the bathroom and went to sit on the bed. Clara’s agony would pass but doubtless she felt awful. He blamed the TARDIS. She was the one that left the endless bottle of champagne out and turned the medi bay into a superheated candlelit den of inequity. Clara, hot and thirsty, had downed most of the available drink in less than half an hour and her body, decades since it had had to process alcohol was now rebelling.

Still the night hadn’t been all bad. He smiled. Again not the romantic union he had pictured for them, but there was plenty of time for that and it had been quite satisfying in some ways. He had been careful not to take advantage as Clara became increasingly inebriated but early in the proceedings she had more or less begged him for his aid and he was pleased to see that his lips and hands still had some surprising skills. His smile spread a little wider; yes he could still be proud of himself. This body hadn’t exactly been tested but so far he was pleased with the results and they hadn’t even got to intercourse.

A memory washed over him. Clara Oswald, warm, heart racing, flushed cheeks and big pupils, in his arms moaning against his neck as he touched her. It was fast and desperate, and her release came quickly at the lightest caress. It was a memory he would absolutely cherish, filing ti away in the most protected vaults of his mind. He’d like to add to it, make it one of many remembrances involving a naked Clara moaning his name. He made a mental note to suggest it when she was done being sick.

There was a click as the door of the bathroom swung open and there she was. Pale, dark eyed and bleary. She hugged her dressing gown around her and shuffled her way back to the bed where she collapsed sideways on the covers he had just made up. The Doctor shelved his saucy ideas for a while.

‘My head hurts,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Make it stop.’

He chuckled and she lobbed a scatter cushion in his direction. ‘Make it stop,’ she repeated, ‘I am officially way too old to be this hungover. I haven’t experienced this sort of pain since I was alive the last time. I’m scared I might die. I’ve been through all of this just to die of a hangover.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said, secretly loving the drama that was Clara at that moment, ‘There will be no more dying.’

Clara squinted at him. ‘Painkillers then? You have them right?’

The Doctor relented, ‘Painkillers, and then I know the perfect place to visit today… somewhere with fresh cool air, brisk walks…get the blood pumping…’

He could hear her groaning as he left the room and the sounds were still present when he ambled back a few minutes later with supplies. Clara hadn’t moved from where she sprawled star shaped on the bed. He leant over her with a glass and a palmful of pills.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘How many?’

‘Three.’

‘This is an alien painkiller isn’t it?’ she said, unimpressed.

‘Just take it. It works a treat.’

‘I’m not going to grow a tail or anything?’

‘No, not a tail, no side effects, well no major ones...’ he dropped three pills into her hand before she could say anything more and retreated. ‘I need you well… for where we’re going…’

Clara swallowed the pills and settled back into the covers. ‘Yes, well don’t hold your breath, the thing about hangovers is that you need to wallow in them, suffer after the previous night, feel sick, have a headache, maybe watch a box set and mournfully regret your actions from the night before until you start to feel better.’

The Doctor looked over nervously from where he was laying out an outfit for her. ‘Regret your..?’

‘Actions. Like when I was a student, I’d spend all of Sunday groaning and being embarrassed and trying to hide from the world. I’d usually kiss the wrong guy the night before or… worse…some of the things I did….. I was totally ashamed, and my friends always knew and wound me up about it for weeks…urgh I think back and I’m still cringing.’

The Doctor shifted nervously by the chair. ‘Clara, do you remember much about last night?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Last night, how much do you recall?’

‘Sunburn… massage with lotion…’ she smiled and the Doctor mirrored her, relaxing and turning back to finish laying out a heavy coat. ‘Then it all goes blurry. ’

‘Blurry?’ he said flatly.

‘I must have passed out,’ Clara concluded.

‘You don’t remember the rest of the evening? I mean after the sun lotion?’

‘Nope, but I’m guessing you put me to bed right? I’m wearing pyjamas…’ she looked up at him, ‘Hope you didn’t see anything a gentleman shouldn’t,’ she winked and closed her eyes again. The Doctor’s face fell.

Clara had been so drunk she’d forgotten. All of it. Thank goodness he’d resisted going all the way but even so… those had been some of his best moves. His best and most memorable moves and now it might as well not have happened. He felt hollowly disappointed. Well, alcohol wasn’t going to feature in today’s excursion, not one drop. This trip would put the romance back into their current situation, if he could wake Clara up long enough to get dressed. A pair of silk pyjamas just wasn’t going to cut it.

He strode purposefully over to the bed and stood over his companion, pulling out his sonic and prodding her with it in the shoulder. She grumbled and opened one eye.

‘Watch what you’re doing with that thing,’ she moaned.

‘Come on, up you get,’ prod, ‘Come on!’

‘You’re just not going to leave me alone are you?’

He smiled a little ghoulishly.

‘Fine.’ She said heaving herself up on her arms, ‘Excursion. Excursion not adventure please. Why is this all so hard? I used to have endless energy!’

‘Well you are 429 years old,’ he commented.

‘No it’s the being alive thing. I tire. I get hungover. Things ache. My body’s always wanting something. Food, drink, sleep. it’s so demanding. I spend all day doing its bidding. I’ve no time for anything else. I guess I just didn’t think about any of this when I was frozen and now I’m sort of thawing out and it’s all starting up again and its weird.’ Clara shuffled over to the clothes the Doctor had laid out for her and frowned. ‘Ok, talking of weird,’ she said.

‘Weird?’

‘Where are we going? The arctic? There are enough layers and fur here for the Scott Expedition.’

The Doctor laughed a little and moved to the door to allow her to change in private. ‘The arctic?,’ he said, ‘No, no much better than that.’

 

 

 

‘This is not better than the arctic,’ Clara said, a few hours later when they had reached their destination. She stood huddled un her furry coat, automatically pulling it tighter around her. She’d gone on strike after at lest two miles walk in the snow and was rooted to the spot while the Doctor went on without her a short way. Finally he turned and looked at her and she ignored him pointedly. She resembled a small sulky child. With a hangover.

‘You’ve not seen the best of it yet,’ he assured.

Clara glared at him, ‘the best of it? Snow and more snow and maybe some ice?’

‘No there’s something special just another quarter of a mile away,’ he said.

‘Well why couldn’t we just land there instead of going on a bloody polar trek first.’

‘Because, as I have already explained, the tiny vibrations from the TARDIS would….’

‘Interfere with its wotsit, whatever its wotsit is, yes, yes…’ she tramped on a few paces, her legs sinking calf deep into snow.

‘My feet hurt,’ she said, ‘Sort of bitey pain. And my fingers, they hurt too. They hurt but I can’t feel them either if that makes any sense?’

‘It’s the cold,’ the Doctor said. Clara rolled her eyes.

‘Yes thanks I worked that one out,’ she said.

‘Well you might not have, it’s a long time since you felt cold.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It didn’t matter where I was or what the ambient temperature rose or fell to, I just stayed the same. Comfortable, never chilled, never had a fever, never broke a sweat, or…. _or_ ….’ she paused, rubbed her hands up and down her arms to try and warm herself, ‘I think I’m shivering,’ she observed.

The Doctor came around in front of her and stopped her in her tracks, taking both her hands in his and pulling her close. Clara grinned suddenly in a more forgiving mood at the sight of his affection.

‘Oh?’ she said, ‘what’s this?’ Smiling in return the Doctor pulled her flush against him in her large soft coat and then adjusted her fur lined hood. He could feel the tremble of her body through her clothes.

‘You really are sensitive to the cold,’ he mused.

‘Plain old human physiology, can’t all be time lords,’ she replied.

‘Do you really find it so awful?’ he asked, ‘Having these things back again?’

‘Not awful, strange,’ she admitted, ‘So many of them are just impractical. Whoever or whatever designed humans could have done a better job.’

‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor disagreed, ‘I’m rather fond of the way you are designed.’

Clara giggled and then began rubbing her nose with one gloved hand. ‘If I was well designed I wouldn’t have a nose like a block of ice,’ she moaned, ‘Eww I think its running too.’

‘It’s just the cold,’ the Doctor rummaged in his endless pockets for a tissue, wiped her funny little nose for her in case her fingers were too frozen to do it herself. That and he found it rather sweet.

‘Thanks.’

‘Clara?’

‘Hmm?’ she looked up at him. Very gently he leaned forward and placed a soft warm kiss on the tip of her poor cold nose. ‘omewhere inside his dignified Time Lord persona was rolling its eyes at him.

‘Come on,’ he said having pacified her, ‘not far, and it’s worth it I promise.’

The last quarter mile did pass quickly and soon the Doctor saw the waterfall come into view. It tumbled over a high cliff still covered with snow and the water itself fell in odd chains of frozen round pebbles. But it was the sound that had inspired him to bring Clara here. He glanced at her and saw her gazing up at the huge sight, the days sunlight catching in dozens of colours in dozens of pebbles of ice.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

The Doctor tugged her forward a little more.

‘This is a psychic waterfall,’ he explained.

‘How can a waterfall be psychic?’

‘It just can,’ he laughed, ‘honestly Clara of all the things we’ve seen this isn’t the oddest.’

Clara giggled, ‘No I guess not!’

‘Now, pay attention,’ he walked forward a few paces to where the frozen river touched its banks. There were a few loose frozen pebbles scattered at the junction between land and ice and the Doctor took one in his hand and folded it carefully into his palm.

‘Watch,’ he said, ‘And listen. The waterfall uses the connection between one of these pebble and your skin to access your thoughts and memories. Then it will play music to you, always something personal and apt, something that could mean nothing to some and everything to you. Some say its showing you the path of your future.’

Clara watched, rapt, as a single drop of water ran from within the Doctor’s clenched palm and fell to the ground. As it hit the snow, she heard it.

The first notes were tiny and hesitant and so faint she had to almost convince herself she’d heard it at all. But then as the pebble melted further and the little drop of water became a rivulet the melody became stronger and more recognisable. She saw the Doctor drop his head a little and watched with her as the water dripped from hand, he was remembering just as she was, except some of it was new to him, just recently recalled days beforehand, still raw as a result. It made sense that the waterfall would chose these notes above others.

The tune that he played in the diner that day they had parted was now picked out by the waterfall above them, the notes carrying on the frozen air, delicate and haunting. Vivid images of playing the guitar, of lemonade and high stools, and of Clara in a plain blue dress danced through his mind. It hurt even now, even now she was with him, and the song was bittersweet. He pressed his lips together a little to try and contain the emotion but she sensed it, like she always did and he could feel her big eyes on him, full of warmth and understanding.

As the song called ‘Clara’ played on, on the chimes of the psychic waterfall, the real Clara moved towards him again. She slipped an arm around his waist and one hand over his for a moment; she caught his eye and held his gaze, before opening his fingers to reveal that the pebble was now gone. Thawed and melted, a thing of the past.

But the music didn’t stop.


	6. Sneezing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important to remember for this one that in 'In Your Place' the fic that came before this, the Doctor regains his memories when he saves Clara from the Raven. That is to say he's only had them back a little while...

If his classmates from the Academy could see him now. The Doctor bent to scoop snow from the ground and mould it into a medium sized ball. He was acting more like Chinboy than his current ‘self.’ He grinned. What did his old classmates know about life really? Stuck up, charmless…

A crunch to his right alerted him and he peered through the branches of a bare tree standing bravely in the frozen landscape. There she was, searching for him, hood up obscuring her face, gloved hands attempting to warm each other. Now was his chance. He leapt out from his hiding place and pelted the snowball in Clara’s direction. She yelped and rounded on him like lightning, flinging one straight back which hit him square in the chest with an ‘oommph.’ Clara cackled. It wasn’t a noise he was used to hearing from her and he must have pulled a peculiar face because she clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to stifle her giggles instead. Her eyes flicked up to his with mischief and he could see snowflakes on her eyelashes. Finally she quelled her laughter and put her hand back down by her side, drawing herself up to all five foot one inches.

‘Come on then!’ she challenged smugly, the knowledge that she’d been consistently winning this farce of a fight for the last half hour.

Well that was quite enough. He moved and her eyes widened but she couldn’t get away fast enough. He tackled her and brought her to the snowy ground easily and safely, their bodies sinking into it without injury. He was pinning her there now and shifted so his lips were level with hers before pressing a kiss to her open mouth, her warm breath showing him the way. Clara wriggled until she was comfortable under him and they let the kiss guide them. After a few minutes she pulled back. He could have looked into those eyes forever and wondered not for the first time what she possibly saw in him.

‘Doctor?’ she said.

He could feel her heartbeat through his chest, strong and regular, like the last four hundred years hadn’t passed.

‘Doctor?’ she persisted.

‘Hmm?’

‘It’s cold,’ she whispered, ‘I’m lying in the snow and its cold.’

‘Would you rather I laid in the snow? We could switch places?’

She made a despairing face, ‘No I’d rather we went back and laid somewhere more suitable for laying.’

‘Why would you want to do that, it’s the middle of the day and… Oh,’

He felt his eyes go wide. This was it. And this time she’d remember. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Right. Yes, Ok,’ and he scrabbled to his knees. He noticed her grin quickly, follow him up with a smile and a giggle. He brushed down the snow from her back and then held out his hand until she grasped it in her mittened one and tugged him in the vague direction of the TARDIS. He had to park it far away didn’t he? Never mind anticipation was half the fun. Would it be undignified of him to run? He looked down at his companion, it never had been before.

Clara sneezed suddenly. Sniffed a little wetly. ‘Sorry, been out in the cold too long,’ she said rubbing her nose.

‘Never mind, come back to the TARDIS and warm up.’

‘A hot tub,’ she requested as they crunched through the snow at an increasingly rapid and excited pace, ‘A huge Jacuzzi with lots of bubbles.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ the Doctor said, turning to walk backwards in front of her.

‘The bubbles are fun, they add to the whole er… thing, to the satisfaction,’ she said and he raised his eyebrows.

She sneezed again before he could properly tease her back. This time she held her glove over her face and patted down her pockets for a tissue.

‘Here,’ the Doctor said passing her one from his seemingly endless supply of things in his pockets..

‘Ugh…’ Sneeze, ‘Maybe I’m allergic to you?’ Sneeze.

‘That would be a complete disaster,’ he said, ‘I might have to regenerate into a version that didn’t give you hives.’

‘I don’t have hives,’ sneeze, ‘I just…’ sneeze, ‘can’t stop,’ sneeze.’Sneezing.’

The Doctor watched her fall into a run of sneezes at least five long. Her whole body lifted off the ground with each one. ‘Um, Clara are you quite alright?’

‘I feel a bit weird, it’s not those painkillers you gave me is it, a side effect from them?’

‘No, that would be a ridiculous side effect. It must be a symptom of something.’

‘Great,’ she muttered between sneezes and accepted another tissue from the Doctor. ‘I’ve got a disease.’

‘Well I suppose your immune system is a bit out of practice, it needs time to defrost and thaw like the rest of you.’

‘I wasn’t actually frozen you know, I wasn’t put in a freezer I mean, so that example is a bit ropey,’ Clara complained.

‘Your immune system has been in suspended animation like the rest of you. It may take a while to reactivate properly. This is probably only the common cold. There’s nothing threatening on this planet. Let’s get back and we’ll scan you in the medibay…’ he hesitated, ‘Actually we can probably just do that in your room, no need for the high tech stuff.’ Or the candles. Or the ever lasting champagne. If they were going to do this it would be without the TARDIS’s aid and with full recall.

However by the time they had re-entered the TARDIS Clara’s previously icy nose was streaming and her eyes were red. She was definitely running a temperature and desperately stripped out of her hot furs and layers until she was dressed only in the light blouse and leggings beneath it all. Beads of sweat speckled her brow and her cheeks were rather flushed. If he was one hundred percent honest the Doctor might admit she looked a little hot tousled and sexy but he felt that was currently immoral given her physiological state.

The sonic screwdriver whistled and came to its conclusion.

‘Well?’ she asked, her voice now slightly raspy.

‘Common cold,’ he replied. ‘Developed rather fast in you, but you know… low immune system…’

‘So it should pass quick,’ Clara concluded quickly. ‘It’s just a cold. Ok, I can work with that. I mean I don’t feel great but it’s not the end of the world either. If it developed that fast maybe it will go fast too.’ The Doctor wandered dejectedly over to the console, shut the TARDIS doors and programmed her into the vortex. Thwarted again this time by a lousy little virus hell bent on spoiling their reunion.

‘You’d better get some rest,’ he said kindly but with disappointment dripping from him.

‘Rest, yes…’ Clara looked at him, held out a hand in his direction, ‘Hey. Keep me company, distract me, feed me and it will all be over soon.’

‘What?’ the Doctor asked curiously.

Clara looked at him with frustration, ‘You know, look after me, don’t leave me to have this cold on my own. Bring me soup, change the DVD….’

‘You have DVDs? That’s positively backward Clara.’

‘You try getting old Earth series any other way!’

‘Ok , ok,’ he held up his hands, ‘DVDs.’

‘Being ill can be fun,’ Clara declared, ‘If you’re with the right person… and its nothing serious obviously. If it were bubonic plague I wouldn’t feel nearly as chipper.’

‘I think I’d be slightly more worried myself, look are you sure…?’

‘Yes!’ Clara got up.

The Doctor looked at her a little doubtfully but as she waved him through to follow her down the corridors of the TARDIS he decided to try to embrace her strange human habits. If he was ill, which was never, he hid away until his superior physiology repaired itself and got rid of the parasitic intruder. Clara seemed to want a sickness pyjama party of some kind; treats, ice cream and movies. Oh he would get so bored if this was what lay ahead for the next few days, Clara or not. He was no good at staying still and watching TV, he never had been when she’d tried it with him in the past. But this was her request and he would do it for her anyway and not let on. He’d fought daleks and cybermen, he could manage this. Bracing himself he let himself into her room.

Clara was perched at the top of the bed wearing nothing but her knickers and a camisole top. She had a box of tissues and was fanning herself with an ancient DVD cover. With her pink cheeks and mussed up hair she looked absolutely beautiful, even if her nose was a little red.

‘I’m completely boiling,’ she moaned, ‘Must have a temperature. So weird. My temperature never fluctuated and now I’m flashing back and forth. Hot cold, cold hot. This must be what the menopause is like. God I’ll have to go through that too now.’

The Doctor did what he always did when faced with talk of women and hormones and busied himself with something else. He scanned her again, ‘Thirty eight point two,’ he declared.

‘I need cooling down,’ she said and lay across the bed. ‘Cool sheets. Mmm.’ The Doctor hesitated by the door. ‘Come and join me,’ she said, ‘I’m not contagious to you I bet.’

‘No.’

‘Good well come on, strip down a bit first though, you’ve too many layers and some of them are scratchy and I don’t want to feel all itchy when they rub up against me.’

‘Rub up… against…’

‘Hugs, Doctor, you were getting quite good at those. I’ll be requesting some later if I feel rotten.’ Clara sneezed again. ‘Urgh why do I get the feeling this is going to get so much worse before it gets better?’

The Doctor slid onto the bed in what was for him fairly minimal clothing, a t-shirt and trousers. Clara nodded approvingly, pressed play on her DVD, and then after a moment sidled up to him. He peered down at her.

‘Want something?’ he asked, ‘Is this where I’m supposed to fetch soup?’

‘No.’ She looked meaningfully at him and then he detected the slightest tremor in her body.

‘Cold now?’ he asked, ‘One extreme to the other?’

‘Uh-huh,’ she confirmed and sneezed again. The Doctor drew her even closer and rested her head against his shoulder while she reached for some stray covers to tuck around them both. Clara left just enough of her left arm out to reach for tissues and then settled back to watch her Game of Throne collection. Puzzled the Doctor frowned his way through two of the episodes until finally he asked the question that was driving him to distraction.

‘That girl?’

‘Yes,’ Clara croaked and went into a fit of coughing.

‘That’s… that’s not…’

‘Ashildr, yeah.’

‘How? Why?’

‘She fancied a change of career and time zone for a while, she does these things. She can be anything she wants, anywhere she wants, she has limitless time. She can train as a doctor or lawyer or she can be an artist or a musician. She’s done it all. This time it was acting. She was quite good really. She’s quite good at most things but then she has forever to perfect it.’ Clara fell into a paroxysm of coughing after explaining and he rubbed at her back distractedly.

‘I wonder where she went this time?’ the Doctor asked watching their old acquaintance on the screen.

‘Well wherever she went she took my TARDIS,’ Clara said a little angrily.

‘This one’s better… ouch! Don’t pinch me, she is!’

‘Still her true colours showed,’ Clara said of Ashildr, ‘It’s sad, we got on so well for so long.’

‘I don’t think she can help it,’ the Doctor said thoughtfully, ‘Me will always be alone in the end, she was too young when she received immortality. Something like that… it does things to you.’

Clara shuffled around a bit and looked at him. ‘Stop that, next you’ll be blaming yourself again.’

‘Well I did…’

‘Shut up…’

‘And then I did something similar to you,’ he groaned, ‘I will just never learn. I can’t resist but to interfere.’

‘You do it to try and save people.’

‘That’s not the point, I cause so much damage, I…’

Her lips came hard against his own in a successful attempt to silence him and Clara kissed him briefly. Before he expected her to, she broke away gasping.

‘Can’t breathe, nose won’t let me breathe, it feels all blocked and stuffy. Eww, it must be full of icky stuff… I’m sorry… I kissed you and I’m all gross.’ She plucked three tissues from the box and desperately blew her nose. ‘Eww it won’t budge. I can’t breathe like this! My nose is getting sore and red. I must look a total state!’

Clara’s distress amused the Doctor but he kept it under wraps. She looked at him with feverishly glassy eyes and an expression of desperation. Softly he swept back a damp strand of her hair and touched her cheek softly.

‘Relax, it’s me, I’ve seen you in worse states than a bit fluey.’

She paused and looked at him to assess truthfulness. ‘Given that you’ve seen me dead, I guess I really don’t have anything to worry about,’ Clara said after a moment. The Doctor looked at her steadily, a cold pain behind his ribs. How he wished she hadn’t said that, how he wished those memories weren’t freshly reinstalled into his mind. He’d lived four hundred years without them and now they felt like yesterday. He looked away before replying.

‘Well if you put it that way, although really I’d rather you didn’t,’ he replied, tone flat and unreadable.

‘Sorry,’ she said softly.

The Doctor picked at the covers for a moment and then tried to rouse himself from the image of Clara sprawled dead on a cobbled street. It was all his fault. He had let it happen. But he couldn’t dwell, her gaze heavy on him, watching, she’d know. He swallowed hard and forced the memory as far away as he could.

‘I was thinking more along the lines of ill, drunk, half naked dancing on a table,’ he said, ‘or that time you were in the universes second most beautiful garden and got us banned…’

Clara giggled and the atmosphere immediately lightened. ‘I’m a disaster.’

The Doctor pulled her close to him again and felt her body relax but for the occasional sneeze. He became adept at anticipating and plucking tissues from the box just in time. He tried again and again to keep the memories at bay, cursing each time they crept forward. Stupid Doctor, he would have to deal with them at some point and some point soon. But he didn’t want to, he just wanted to be with Clara, to be reunited, to forget the past and tell her over and over how much he loved her now.

Sensing she was slipping he kissed the top of her head and adjusted them both so that they were comfortable. Clara’s illness finally caught up with her and she dozed against his chest, a high wheeze coming from her lungs and an occasional sniffle from her nose. It would pass, he thought, it was just a cold. Just a cold was nothing to a woman like Clara.

The Doctor closed his eyes and a long forgotten landscape of memories came rushing to greet him.


	7. Bleeding

Clara was feeling better, not one hundred percent but definitely getting there given that it was her first experience with a virus in several centuries. She had told him that this fact alone entitled her to something called ‘man flu.’ He’d been confused at that, even scanned her again to ascertain that it was only the common cold, until Clara rolled her eyes at him and explained the concept. Man flu. Creating a drama out of a simple cold. Something human males did all the time. If he was honest he still didn’t really understand. Was it something to do with human male physiology, did they contract viruses and suffer more? No, she said, that’s the point. Still baffled he excused himself and went to check something in the console room. He spent an hour researching Man Flu and turning up more confusing explanations. She had to have it wrong, these men seemed to be suffering from something much more serious.

Now the Doctor was wending his way back through the corridors to the room where Clara should be resting up when he heard a faint hum of music coming from one of the rooms he was passing. He couldn’t place the track, it being something non-descript which he guessed came from Clara’s era, but he did find the culprit.

Clara was back in the kitchen, never a good sign, mixing in a mixing bowl and singing along croakily with something tuneless the TARDIS was belting out of the walls. The Doctor snapped his fingers and the music stopped. Clara looked up.

‘Oi!’ she complained.

‘It sounded awful, what makes you listen to that rubbish?’ he said more irritably than he first meant to.

‘It’s not rubbish, it’s just not Beethoven or the Rolling Stones or any of _your_ particular favourites.’ She put the bowl down heavily and pointedly, ‘Just because you’ve met all your musical heroes,’ she grumbled, ‘Just because every track you listen to has a story and an anecdote. I just like listening to things I’m familiar with, things from… well.. you know…’

‘Things from what?’ he asked leaning against the counter.

‘When I was alive, when I had a heartbeat the first time around and I could feel things,’ she said exasperated that he couldn’t see the blindingly obvious, ‘It brings back memories, good ones. Its nostalgia.’ Clara hoisted the bowl again and began mixing while the Doctor stood feeling slightly guilty. Anything that brought back good memories he could support, especially since his own restored memory bank was currently insisting on churning up the worst of his past, the gaping hole that had been the loss of the woman in front of him. The paradox had remained. She had not died on Trap Street but he had still suffered the Confession Dial and the memory was now so horrifically distorted by straining, tampered with timelines that he was sure it was causing twice the pain it ever had. He rubbed his face with one hand and willed a headache away.

‘Sorry,’ he said quietly, ‘I understand, really I do.’

Clara gave him an odd look. ‘Are you OK, you look a bit pale?’

‘Maybe I’m going to get man flu,’ he smiled crookedly. Clara relaxed. ‘What’s all this anyway, you’re supposed to be recovering.’

‘Got bored,’ she said simply. ‘It was this or visit a planet and I somehow knew you wouldn’t let me do that so I thought, cooking, cooking’s fun.’

‘Cooking causes you stress,’ he pointed out truthfully.

‘Ok I’m not doing it for the fun,’ she admitted, ‘I’m doing it to thank you…’

‘Thank me?’ the Doctor moved to sit on a high stool near to where Clara was working. ‘What for?’

‘Er… saving my life, again,’ Clara said with an obvious ‘duh,’ in her tone, ‘Giving me my heartbeat back and all the stuff that comes with it?’

‘Like sunburn and hangovers and exhaustion?’

‘Yes those,’ she laughed shortly, ‘And all the other things that make a person alive and sentient and connected to the world.’ She paused until she could find his gaze, ‘Thank you,’ she said seriously, ‘For a long time I felt very lost, that’s partly why I went back to Trap Street to end it all and close the loop. All around me the universe was growing and changing and I just stayed the same, like a ghost. Even you change, Doctor.’

He nodded and looked down at his hands in the silence that followed. Clara put the bowl down and moved to stand in front of him, forcing him to look up at her face., Her little nose was still red from her illness but a healthier colour was now in her cheeks and she looked altogether less pained. The Doctor inwardly purred a little as she lifted one hand and stroked his thick hair.

‘You’ve also been looking after me so well, ‘Clara said, ‘You deserve a little reward, so I thought I’d cook.’

Despite the pleasant petting, Clara’s attempt he suspected of lulling him into a false sense of security, the Doctor looked at her anxiously. ‘Reward?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m doing three courses.’

‘You should be resting,’ he tried. He could think of other rewards he would prefer and they could be embarked upon while horizontal. The Doctor caught his line of thought and pinched himself.

‘I’m fine,’ Clara was saying, ‘The starters are done, the dessert is in that bowl and that just leaves me the main.’

‘Which is?’ he asked suspiciously. Clara harrumphed at him for his nerve.

‘It’s a surprise, you’ll like it. Now let me get on.’

‘You want me to leave you to it?’ the Doctor asked half wondering if he would have a kitchen left if he did just that. Clara saw the fear in his eyes. She ruffled his hair because it annoyed him. Then to his alarm she turned back to her counter and produced a long kitchen knife. He sat up a bit straighter.

‘Um… Clara…’

‘It’s fine,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’ve done a whole lot of cooking over the years, learned some things.’

Tensely the Doctor perched on his stool watching her every move. She appeared to be in the process of chopping some sort of deep blue alien fruit or veg, he couldn’t quite see past her body to identify it, but he could sense the knife was moving rather too fast for his liking. Just because she’d cooked a lot of meals in all those years apart didn’t mean she was any good at it.

The Doctor winced, that was a horrible thing to think.

But also possibly quite true. It had never been her forte. Clara was a wonderful woman with many, many good qualities but cooking, well…

‘Ow!’ her sudden shriek stopped his thoughts in their tracks while at the same time confirming his suspicions about her capabilities in the kitchen. ‘Oww!’ he watched as a spatter of bright red blood arced in a semi circle across the kitchen counter. The Doctor leapt up from his place and grabbed Clara’s wrist, turning her towards him. She had clamped her uninjured hand over the fingers of the other but he could still see the blood oozing through any gaps.

‘You were saying?’ he said drily.

‘’Shut up its just a cut it’ll… oh… wait… no it won’t…’

‘Won’t what?’ he asked leaning past her to get a cloth.

‘When I used to cut myself, when I got any injury, it would vanish in seconds, sometimes right in fron tof my eyes, because I was in that loop between heartbeats.’ She looked down at her hand and carefully lifted her uninjured one away. A fair spurt of blood came from beneath and she clamped back down. ‘Yikes,’ she said

The Doctor laughed a little, ‘yes well it looks like we’ll have to apply pressure and wait for it to stop. Maybe a bandage and a few days healing time just like everyone else?’

‘You;ve no idea how strange that is. And it hurts. Its all stingy.’ Clara fiddled with her hands, looking and covering and looking again. ‘It’s still going.’

‘Well stop interfering with it, let it clot off,’ the Doctor said skilfully taking over and wrapping the cloth around her injured fingers. ‘There keep the pressure on, we’;ll need to get some proper dressings.’

Clara pressed down on the wounds. ‘Medi-bay?’ she asked.

‘Yes… um…’ but he couldn’t see how he really had any choice. Clara had a wound that needed tending to, and the TARDIS hadn’t necessarily set up the medbay like a brothel again, he was just being paranoid. He was sure all he would find would be dressings and bandages.

And candles. There were fresh candles. He cursed inside his head and glared around the room. No wonder the TARDIS had supported Clara with her music and cooking, she was plotting, hurrying him along, clearly under the impression these two had wasted enough time.

He watched as Clara hopped up on the examination table, and he noticed for trhe first time that day how short her skirt was. She swung her bare legs back and forth while she waited for him.

‘Well?’ she said when he stood perfectly still.

‘Well… yes… dressings…’

She shot him an odd look and he turned to rummage through the supplies behind him. Needles and syringes and aseptic fields. Large dressing packs, small dressing packs, sutures, sterilised equipmet.

‘I probably just need a plaster,’ Clara offered from behind him.

‘I think you need stitches,’ he said grabbing what he needed and returning to the table. He tried to fight off the memories of a few nights ago when ona similar bench Clara ahd been moaning his name hotly into his ear. He felt his face flush.

‘You sure you’re ok?’ she asked, ‘You look a bit warm now. Sure you’re not getting this cold thing?’

‘I’m fine,’ the Doctor replied trying to quell a slight tremble in his hands. He was carefully unwrapping Clara’s injured hand and assessing the damage. The bleeding was slowing and the wound was clean but a suture or two would still be needed to stop it reopening every time she flexed her fingers. He set about fixing it up, focusing as hard as he could on the job.

Clara was watching him though, her face very close to him, her breath hitting his cheek now and again. He could almost feel the warmth from her body and smell her scent and he was more than aware of the effect it was having on him. While she had forgotten their little interlude due to alcohol he could remember every moment. What’s more she had collapsed satisfied into his arms and been taken to bed, but he had reached no such satisfaction himself and could now sense that inner tension rapidly building.

He glanced at her face and she caught his eye playfully, lifting her eyebrows in a devilishly coquettish manner. She was teasing him and this time he was rising to the occasion, so to speak. Clara brushed one of her thighs against him without warning and his breath caught in his throat. He quickly looked down again at her hand and finished the last stitch, snipping away the excess. He was just dropping the used instruments into a kidney dish when he felt her press closer against him and pull him gently against her body.

‘Thank you,’ she said looking up at him with wide pupils.

The Doctor couldn’t resist. Sober, in her right mind, Clara was quite clearly interested in a repeat performance from the other night only this time with memory banks intact. He quickly kissed her, and that kiss deepened rapidly as he pulled her tighter against him, feeling the hard peaks of her nipples through his shirt, the rapidfire of her heartbeat. He was pressed against her thigh, his hips demanding of their own accord and her responding by opening her legs slightly to him. The Doctor began to moan softly as her sound hand moved over his hair and neck, down his back.

Clara broke off to speak to him, whispering in his ear with a giggle. ‘God, Doctor, why didn’t you tell me? You’re ready to explode.’

He responded by pushing up her skirt, seeking to repeat the pleasure he had given her the last time but he felt her shake her head against him. ‘You first,’ she said.

‘No, Clara,’ she was kissing his neck now and he was rapidly losing will power, the throb in his trousers making him feel increasingly desperate. ‘No… your hand..’

‘Oh shut up,’ she chided, flicking open the buttons of his trousers and quickly forcing them down, ‘I have two you know.’

It was at that point his brain shorted out.


	8. Brooding

The Doctor was coming down from the high that Clara’s uninjured hand had happily supplied him with. He leaned against her shoulder as she remained perched on the examination table, slowly rubbing his back and pressing kisses to his neck and chest where his shirt had fallen open. Fallen was a euphemism, it had been ripped. He smiled. His breath was still coming faster than usual and his legs felt a little weak but inside he was still and sated. He could sense Clara’s feeling of smugness but he felt it was probably appropriate, she was after all surprisingly skilled.

‘Doctor?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Have we been here before… I mean done this before…. Specifically, in here?’ Clara asked curiously.

He opened his eyes but remained where he was.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Something about the smell of those candles maybe and…’ she paused, thinking, ‘You, here, this table, your arms round me like this, it’s different, more intimate than we’ve been before but I’m sure…’

She drew a sudden shocked breath. ‘Sunburn day,’ she exclaimed, ‘Sunburn day when I drank all that champagne and we were kissing….’ She pieced the evening together slowly. The Doctor pulled back a little and looked at the floor not sure how to respond. ‘We were kissing… and I was hot, I felt so hot and then you… oh,’ Clara’s big eyes registered shock and then quickly her expression changed. She grinned. ‘I must have been so drunk,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Doctor said awkwardly, ‘Did I take advantage? I didn’t mean to take advantage, you just seemed like… I should have thought…’ Oh this couldn’t be worse. Why didn’t he resist? Why?

‘No I don’t mean ‘God I was so drunk I kissed the Doctor,’ I mean God I must have been drunk to forget. Imagine forgetting that. _That,_ with you of all people. I’ve wanted that forever, at least that’s how it feels. And I have to be an idiot and drink too much and now I can only remember bits of it.’

The Doctor lifted his eyes again. ‘Really?’

Clara smiled reassuringly, ‘Yes, you daft old man, of course. Did I pass out on you, have my fun but pass out and deny you yours?’

‘I didn’t really see it like that,’ he replied.

‘No, you wouldn’t, human guys, probably would be less impressed.’ She kissed him tenderly and watched him tidy his clothes. He retained a slightly awkward air.

‘Let’s do something,’ she said, ‘Let’s make a day of it, go somewhere nice, somewhere with people and music and shops, or little market stalls they’re always fun…’

‘Are you sure you’re well enough?’ the Doctor asked, ‘Don’t you want to…well…’

‘What?

‘Go back to bed?’ he asked somewhat bluntly and Clara burst out laughing. He glared at her.

‘Later! Down boy!’ she giggled, ‘A day out, some food and music and people and then we can go back to bed. It’s all about the romance.’

‘You wouldn’t think that if you and observed as many humans as I have,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s all about one thing for them. They’re fixated.’

Clara stared at him in amusement ‘What have you been observing them doing exactly?’ she asked.

He rolled his eyes, ‘Conducting relationships in general. But one thing obscures all else. They’re sex obsessed.’

‘You’re the one wanting to go to bed.’

‘That’s because I thought that’s what you’d want! I mean not that I don’t want to, I just… well you’re human and… and..’ he was growing flustered and pushed one hand through his hair. Clara caught it and squeezed.

‘Shh I’m only teasing. I just want to make it special. Shhh, I’m sorry.’

With Clara rubbing his hand he felt himself calm a little. ‘Special?’ he asked. ‘What kind of special?’

‘I’ve been alone a long time,’ Clara said, ‘And more importantly I’ve been without you and I’ve dreamt about this, being with you, really being with you. I don’t want to rush after being patient all this time. Please? Let’s do a date.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Somewhere with people?’

‘Somewhere full of life,’ Clara corrected, ‘Where I can be part of it again.’

 

He wasn’t sure at first if he’d picked the right place. Clara usually preferred beaches, at least the Clara of the past did according to his retrieved memories, but something about the day made him pick something more subtle. He watched her face carefully when they stepped out of the TARDIS and when the slow smile developed on her lips he could have jumped for joy.

They were in London, but not the London of Clara’s era. She couldn’t return to that for the sake of her already confused timeline and the possibility that some angry Reapers might appear. Instead he chose the next best thing, an era where they had spent some time together, albeit fighting off robots and other alien beings, and an era where they had friends if she wanted to expand their company. Clara loved Victorian London and the people they knew there. For now he pointed her in the direction of the frozen pond and the market stalls. It was clearly the run up to Christmas and they were laden with nuts and dried fruits, jams and pickles while others roasted chestnuts and provided mulled beverages.

Clara grinned ‘Don’t let me have too much wine,’ she advised and took his arm. She was dressed in her old green frock, one he had always admired her in, her tiny waist nipped in by a corset and her hair in ringlets around her face. She wore a heavy stole around her shoulders and was swaddled in a warm overcoat. In the cold of the winter afternoon her cheeks glowed with life. She tugged at him and pointed down to the pond. ‘Ice skating,’ she said with glee, ‘Come on.’

‘Umm I’m not sure I do ice skating…’

‘I’m almost certain you don’t, but it would be fun to try wouldn’t it?’ she turned her face up to him, ‘This is what life is all about Doctor,’ she said, ‘It’s not just carrying on being alive day after day, like we’ve done for God knows how long, it’s about trying things, enjoying things, not enjoying others, _making memories_.’

‘I really don’t know…’

‘Make enough new memories, Doctor, good ones, and they help chase the bad ones away,’ she held his gaze for a moment, exposing something very vulnerable, ‘Please.’

The Doctor hesitated and glanced at the pond where couples were slowly circling it in formal pairs.

‘We don’t need to do anything fancy,’ Clara said tilting her head. ‘No Torvill and Dean, just a few circuits?’ How could he resist that look, and she knew it, but he also knew what she was saying about memories was true, maybe she’d even sensed him struggling with his since they returned, she had a habit of sensing so maybe he should take her advice.

Down to the pond they went and hired the strap on skates. They sat for a moment on a wooden bench while two children tied the leather straps to their boots and made them pond worthy. The Doctor watched in mild envy while Clara chatted easily to them in the way only she could. He’d lost any ability he had with little ones centuries ago with his own family, or so it felt, but she had retained it all this time. The conversation over, their pennies given for their labour, the children giggled and went back to their work, providing skates for another couple who had joined them. Clara prepared to stand up.

‘Give me your arm,’ she said and the pair used each other to stand, giggling and swaying. ‘Right, off we go, and if I fall over don’t laugh.’

They shuffled towards the pond, ‘Isn’t that half the fun?’ he asked supporting her with one arm around her waist.

‘Only if _you’re_ the one who falls over…’

They spend twenty minutes or so circling the pond and the Doctor was surprised firstly at his ability to keep balance and secondly at how adaptive Clara was. Not many, he thought, could don a dress so heavy and dated and whizz round an icerink. Well; whizz was a slight exaggeration but her pace was steady to fair at least. After chatting a while about the sights however he noticed her fall a little quiet, her distraction evident each time they passed the stalls.

‘Hungry?’ he asked, figuring her stomach was the culprit. She laughed softly.

‘No, it’s not that, although I wouldn’t say no to some of those roasted chestnuts…’

‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ he said keeping an eye on her expression. Her smiled was a little fixed, her eyes a little melancholy. The Doctor’s hearts leapt and an image of her leaning over him as the memory wipe took place struck him from nowhere. She must have heard him take a sharp breath because she looked up concerned.

‘Doctor?’

‘It’s nothing’

‘Didn’t sound like nothing?’

The sad smile on her lips had morphed into concern. The sad smile. Oh it had appeared a lot in their relationship before and now it had reared its head again it filled him with panic. This time he couldn’t let it pass.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked drawing them to a halt near to the ramp that lead to the pond.

‘Wrong?’ she asked, ‘Why would anything be wrong? This is perfect, this is romance personified just look at it. The skating and the chestnuts and the people all bustling and arranging before Christmas, it’s the happiest time of the year.’

The Doctor just looked at her, ‘No, there’s something wrong,’ he persisted. ‘Please tell me.’

Clara glanced out across the pond again, this time to the centre where a group of children under ten were playing. The older boys were competing with each other while the girls helped the tiniest of children keep their feet. The scene looked like a Christmas card. He watched her eyes follow their movements and her smile become sad again. He could have sworn there were tears on her lashes.

‘It’s silly,’ Clara said, ‘It’s silly and its nothing, come on, let’s get these skates off and grab some chestnuts.’ She walked ahead of him and sat to remove the strapping, all the while the lines of her face giving away her state of mind. The Doctor knew that if he were just to touch her skin he could probably read the thoughts that were so close to the surface but he wouldn’t pry, he just wanted her to tell him, trust him with whatever was bothering her.

He decided to wait and the pair walked on a little round the pond picking at the treats they had purchased from the stalls. Evening was falling and soon the gas lights were lit but the local population continued to enjoy themselves and the mulled wine flowed. There were carol singers accompanied by a little band and collections for the poor. The atmosphere was one that demonstrated the better side of humanity. As the time ticked by he could spot mothers coming for their children and ushering them home, the little ones reluctant to leave the fun. Clara’s eyes never left them.

She sipped her mulled wine and warmed her hands on the mug as he wrapped one arm around her again.

‘Clara….’ He started.

‘I always wanted children,’ she said suddenly aware of him watching her eyeline. ‘Always. And then the Raven happened and I got frozen and I had to get used to the idea I wouldn’t be able to, not ever. And the odd thing was my body stopped wanting them eventually, not straight away, maybe twenty years down the line. I didn’t get that broody feeling I always got around babies when I was younger. I was too busy adventuring and seeing the universe and I didn’t have time for any of that, kids were something other people did, I was pleased for them, liked them, but there were more exciting things to keep my attention. I had no family, I had to live with that. Now I feel…’ she stopped and frowned, a tiny line forming between her eyebrows, the only line she’d ever developed.

‘What is it you’re feeling?’ the Doctor asked when she didn’t continue.

‘It’s like an ache, like a loss,’ she said still looking at the pond where the last of the straggling children were playing and avoiding home time. ‘Hormones probably,’ she laughed a little painfully, ‘Just stupid hormones kicking back in. Ignore me. I mean it’s ridiculous, Time travellers don’t have children.’

‘I did,’ he said quietly.

‘That was before,’ she said softly, ‘before the TARDIS, before the Time War. Normal family life isn’t you Doctor. And it’s not me now either.’

He heard her expel a breath purposefully and turn to him with a too bright smile.

‘Where to now?’ she asked.

‘Home,’ the Doctor said, ‘Just home.’

Clara nodded gratefully.


	9. Loving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly the end of this instalment but this particular Post Hell Bent set up may return.

He’d messed up. He’d picked the wrong place for the date. He’d stirred up emotions and memories and now Clara was in her room crying on the bed. How had the day gone from their earlier encounter in the med bay to this? Humans. He would never really understand them. The Doctor paced the corridor like an expectant parent and listened for every sound while his ship point blank refused to open the door.

Clara had disappeared almost wordlessly to her room when they had got back to the TARDIS several hours ago. She had a look of barely restrained tearfulness, but wracking his brain he could remember seeing her like that before and it didn’t usually last very long before she would emerge and say she was just ‘being silly,’ or some such excuse. Not so now. The Doctor tried to remember more about those incidents years ago when she had been his companion. Sometimes it was down to something he’d said or done, or not done, and she’d come out and give him a dressing down, but she always came out of there reasonably quickly.

What was this? She’d been doing pretty well adapting back to being alive. Well, apart from the vomiting and the problems with temperature, and sunburn. Ok she hadn’t been doing that well but she’d remained upbeat for the majority of the time. He took her to a Christmas market in 1895 and everything suddenly fell apart.

Children. Family. That’s what she had been talking about as they’d watched the skaters on the pond. Something he now took for granted that he had lost forever to time, and something she had accepted as a possibility when her body froze, but now… He stopped his pacing. Now everything had reverted back to how it had been before. Technically she was still just twenty nine, a woman in her prime, one whose future lifespan had alerted from seeming immortality to one of a normal human being. He chewed his thumb. Humans. Humans with their short lives, always pressured to produce the next generation, to continue the species. Her biology had kicked back in, her clock was ticking both in terms of children… and her life.

The Doctor felt a sudden stab of panic. They had both been thrilled at her heartbeat returning and occupied with exploring what that meant. But both of them, deliberately perhaps, had avoided the subject of lifespan. They were still behaving as though it were endless and she immortal. Hadn’t this got them into trouble before? He chewed harder and yelped as the skin around his nailbed tore. He sucked away the blood. Perhaps all these thoughts had hit her too? Perhaps she was not only thinking about children but her now truncated future.

Sixty years at best, maybe more with futuristic health intervention. She’d lived four hundred, he’d lived well over two thousand. Sixty would go by in a blink. His adrenal glands emptied suddenly into his bloodstream. Only sixty years. Sixty years and he would be going through her loss again. But then wasn’t that what she had tried to teach him? Loss is the story of everyone.

He paced back to the door and listened. She’d fallen quiet. Should he leave her to it? Was she sleeping? As he hesitated he heard the lock click back, the TARDIS’s way of indicating to him to go in.

The room was dim but he could see Clara perched on the bed, her back to him. She was blowing her nose, and next to her a small pile of tissues indicated the level of her distress of the last few hours.

‘Hi,’ she croaked as he stepped in. He could see her wiping her eyes and trying to pull herself back together. He quickly crossed the floor in an awkward half run, his arms held out to envelop her and she didn’t protest as he did just that, squeezing down next to her on the bed and holding her close.

‘Clara, I’m sorry,’ he started, ‘I’ll make it up to you, take you somewhere, less… less…’ he paused, stumped at how to explain it.

‘Less filled with human beings? Less Christmassy, less joyful? It was the perfect place Doctor, beautiful and filled with people and music and love. Everyone was enjoying themselves.’

‘So what went wrong?’ he asked pulling back to see her tearstained face.

She gave him a lopsided smile. ‘I’m just being silly that’s all. All those families… all together, it stirred up… stuff.’

So he had been right on that score. ‘I’m sorry, I should have thought.’

Clara laughed next to him. ‘How were you supposed to predict that?’ she asked rubbing his arm soothingly, ‘I didn’t know I’d see a bunch of kids running about and get all confused and emotional!’ They sat in silence for a moment, Clara running her hands over his chest, smoothing his shirt and fiddling with buttons. Her hands were warm through the material.

‘I got used to losing my family hundreds of years ago,’ Clara said, ‘I accept that they are gone but this is different. This is a family I never had, one I thought I _could_ never have, and now…’

‘Now?’

‘Now, now its…’ she bit down on her lip for a moment, ‘now it’s a physical possibility, a carrot dangled in front of me and its strangely harder to deal with the possibility of that Virtual Family than losing the one I had. It feels cruel, I can have babies again but I’m four hundred years old and a time Traveller who is getting chased by Time Lords and Reapers and really it’s not a good time, but at the _same_ time I don’t _have_ a lot of time anymore… do you see?’

‘Time,’ he said, ‘Causes a lot of problems.’ The Doctor watched her until she looked up at him a little guiltily.

‘I hope you don’t think I’m requesting children, or marriage or settling down on some far away planet,’ she said. ‘I know that isn’t you, that’s not what you’re about. I’m just trying to explain how it feels now I’m alive again. I’m alive but I’m limited, I don’t get to choose when to go back to Trap Street, it’s out of my control.’ He saw her struggle with the concept, same old Clara, the control freak, and now her life could end at any point, sooner rather than later, and that hadn’t been part of the deal before.

He paused before his next question, ‘Do you wish you were back to the way you were? That you had endless time but none of these dilemmas or problems?’

Clara’s expression was a tie between stricken and confused. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. There are a lot of advantage to being Extracted; super fast healing, constant temperature regulation, never getting sick… but it’s kind of boring too. Being alive… well there’s so much to properly experience isn’t there?’

‘You make a better mayfly than a mountain,’ the Doctor said softly.

‘What?’ she laughed.

‘Mayflies,’ he said, ‘are here only a short time but they appreciate the life they have, the beauty of it more than the mountain can. The mountain stands alone and detached while all of life goes on below him. You were always a mayfly, Clara.’

She smiled at his metaphor, ‘Well I’m a mayfly again now, no going back.’

He watched her closely, ‘Would you want to?’ he asked again, ‘Because Extraction isn’t the only way to gain near immortality.’

Clara stared at him slightly open mouthed. ‘What? Well I know about Time Lords, and Ashildr obviously…’

‘There are others, the universe is full of immortals if you know where to look. They just aren’t always called that. I’m just saying, people owe me a few favours, so if it ever became too hard, if you ever wanted to go back to how it was for you… there are ways. ’

Something about being told about regaining immortality made Clara’s vision clearer. ‘No!’ she said suddenly, ‘No! it’s.. its… not what I want… at least I don’t think so. The last few days have been difficult at times, yes, and there are things I still need to work out, but its early, I’ll get there… I’m not just going to give up and go back to being the way I was. I was existing, thinking I was having fun but at the end, when I returned to Trap Street I realised there’s so much more.’

‘Such as?’

‘Like eating until I feel bloated. Like sitting up all night in the library talking to you and falling asleep on the couch. Like passing out from too much champagne. Like burning on the beach and having you apply sun lotion…’ she smiled her first happy smile since he had entered the room. ‘All of those things make up memories, make up truly being alive. I’ve missed that, just like I missed you, because you made me feel _alive_.’

Without warning Clara wrapped her arms around the Doctor’s neck and hugged him close. ‘Thank you,’ she said into his ear.

‘What for?’

‘Caring. And coming to talk to me. And letting me find my own way,’ she kissed his neck once, a slow soft pressure.

‘You’re very welcome,’ he replied quietly, not breaking the embrace.

‘Doctor?’

‘Yes, Clara.’

‘There’s something else that being properly alive helps with, something you need a heartbeat and a working body to really appreciate.’

‘Oh?’ he said distractedly. When Clara didn’t reply he looked up into her eyes, saw that coquettish tilt of her head again. ‘Oh…’ he said in realisation. She nodded. ‘Are you sure? I mean… you’re not too…’

‘Too what?’

‘Upset?’

‘Trust me, this will cheer me up,’ Clara laughed.

The Doctor felt a flood of anxiety wash over him and she must have caught it in his expression.

‘Hey, relax, we’ll be fine. So what we’re both a bit out of practice…’ gently she began opening the buttons of his shirt and inched closer to him on the bed until her thigh was pressed against his. She tipped her head back slightly to encourage him to her level and parted her lips just slightly.

They weren’t in the med bay, the TARDIS hadn’t set them up. Instead they had finally reached a place where they could take the next step. The Doctor leaned forward and began to press slow kisses to her jaw and neck, using the tip of his tongue to draw moist patterns and his lips to kiss them dry again. Clara moaned and adjusted the angle of her body. She wanted him flush against her, not at an awkward side by side tilt, but the Doctor resisted, using the gap between them to allow his hand to wander down from her shoulder to the swell of her breast. She was soft and unblemished and beneath his fingers her nipple grew harder quickly.

He was kissing her, deep and long when, impatient she suddenly removed her top and allowed him free access to her naked skin. Clara threaded her hands through his hair and he felt himself be pushed down to where both breasts were now bare. The smell of her was intoxicating, her perfume and scent, and the way her skin seemed to shimmer in the dim light captivated him. He felt her wriggle on the bed, pull herself deeper onto the mattress and he took it as a sign to follow, at last laying above her, his hips between her legs, separated only by clothing.

Clara quickly began to work on that and he was suddenly filled with an odd kind of confidence that he rarely experienced in these kind of situations. But Clara had waited centuries for this night, and he if he really thought about it had lived through the paradox of four and a half billion years. There was no question of either of them rejecting the other or having second thoughts, this was a frank and shared goal.

The Doctor felt the cooler air at his back as his shirt came away, and then her small efficient fingers were unclasping his belt and trousers. He glanced down at her and she gave him a small apologetic look for the speed with which she was working though in truth the moment she removed him of the last of his clothing he had dived onto hers. At last they were together skin on skin and he felt the ambient temperature rise courtesy of the TARDIS.

The sensation of Clara beneath him was overwhelming and he struggled to control not only his body but his telepathy which threatened to kick in unbidden when their contact was so great. Clara being Clara of course could see him wrestling with something and prodded for an explanation. She looked at him curiously when he explained he was holding back.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Clara, if I let these walls down I’ll end up deep in your head, you’re not telepathic, it might be frightening or heaven forbid painful.’

‘It won’t be,’ she said with unfounded confidence. ‘I’ve done a little basic telepathy, I can stop things from getting too invasive or loud.’

‘What? How?’

‘The Oods taught me.’

‘When?!’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you later. Just trust me and relax a bit. I don’t want you to be with me like this and be spending half your energy trying to stop your brain leaking. Just…do your psychic thing. I promise it’ll be fine.’

He had to admit to a deep sense of relief as he let his walls wall and Clara was there to catch him. She seemed comfortable enough as his mind sent rivulets through hers, linking and exploring. It was beautiful and it was peaceful and he immediately discovered the place she had kept aside for him all this time. He could feel the moisture on his cheeks as she kissed him and was grateful for her welcome.

Under the weight of his body Clara was moving more purposefully now, requesting with her mind and flesh that they join together. He swept his palms over her soft skin and buried his face in her hair and neck as he aligned with her. She felt hot to the touch, wet and tense with need and as he pushed into her his breath left him. By his ear he could hear her pant, against his chest he felt her heartbeat, and wherever he touched her, her skin was flushed and hot. Her body was working hard to give her what she was craving, something she had been completely unable to feel for decades.

Clara’s breathing coming faster, the Doctor felt his own conclusion rushing to him, the different sensations from each part of her and from her mind becoming quickly overwhelming. Like her he had been alone a long time, but he had been spared grieving for her loss. Now with his memories regained and Clara in his arms he realised the depth of his feeling, even deeper that he had felt it in the preceding days. Their kind of love was indeed dangerous, her loss had sent him over the edge and now her presence was doing something similar. He swam in her consciousness, a tightness building in his abdomen, a heat spreading outward, and around him her muscles contracting, grasping, taking everything from him she had long waited for.

Clara rose up suddenly in his arms with a cry and he felt his tenuous control snap, a powerful heave of raw pleasure surging through his body until his voice fell to quiet tears and his limbs lay weak.

There was a silence broken only by the sound of slowing breath and the rustle of bedclothes as the Doctor eventually shifted far enough to wrap them in sheets. He was worried about the telepathy but Clara appeared to be fine, leaning against him, playing with the small hint of a stomach he carried.

‘That went well,’ she surmised.

‘I need some practice.’

Clara looked up at him mock serious, ‘Yes… practice, lots of it...’

A beat.

‘Are you ok?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Take a look and see,’ Clara said and then gestured to her head.

‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I’m not poking about in your mind, Clara.’ She rolled her eyes at his caution.

‘Ok well,’ she said, ‘Take my word for it I’m ok. All that stuff I was saying, about family and being alive and what it was like to be Extracted. That all still stands. But this…’ she pointed to him and then to herself, ‘and being together at last, and being able to experience the universe and all it offers rather than be frozen in time… I pick this over everything.’

‘Clara you’ve only been ‘alive’ a few days, you may change your mind yet.’

‘I know, I’ll probably discover other stuff that’s a pain in the backside, but you and me, most especially you, you make up for it.’

‘How? The Doctor asked, curious.

Clara looked at him like he was an idiot. ‘The last week I’ve experience fatigue, hunger, cold, heat, sickness; all physiological reactions I hadn’t felt in years. Some nice, some not. But there’s one that makes everything worthwhile and that’s the feeling I get inside when I am with you. The skipping heartbeat, the butterflies, the tingles. I would never want that tamed, or frozen or dulled.’

The Doctor blinked owlishly at her, seemingly lost.

‘Love,’ she said simply, ‘I’m talking about love.’


End file.
